Commentary: Pennsylvania Legislature has Ed Rendell fatigue

Why worry about the fight between Ed Rendell and General Assembly Republicans over the lame-duck governor’s budget proposal to expand the state sales tax?

When Rendell proposed a small hike in the personal income tax last February, it only took until September before Rendell and House Democratic leaders conceded that idea was dead.

Unfortunately, it only took four more months to get table games enacted, ending an 11-month budget “process” just in time for Rendell to march to the lectern again Tuesday.

With lessons learned from the last budget fight, however, the good news is that Rendell’s new sales tax expansion scheme will probably die a lot sooner than the PIT.

Like in August.

Or maybe July or even June 30 at 11:57 p.m., if Rendell and state lawmakers are serious about not repeating history — for the eighth straight year.

“We can disagree on what’s in the budget, but let’s agree to get it done on time for the people of Pennsylvania,” Rendell told lawmakers, adding something about “quagmire” and “partisan posturing that leads to legislative gridlock.”

Rendell’s big idea is to drop the sales tax rate from 6 percent to 4 percent but broaden the services and items covered by the tax. That would include taxing Hershey’s Kisses and lawyers fees. The idea may not be as unpopular as Rendell’s call last February to raise the personal income tax. Everyone agrees that the sales tax formula is random, if not nonsensical.

But the Republicans who stymied Rendell’s desire to increase spending last year now have a perfect excuse to oppose any Rendell proposals to raise revenue without looking like the same, old Party of No.

They’re now the Party of No More Rendell, soon.

The governor has a memoir to write and more Haitian orphans to save — a feat for which Rendell got the one, sincere, bipartisan standing ovation in the House chambers Tuesday.

Rendell will only be around for six months of this new budget, a fact Senate Republican leaders were eager to point out. In fact, the subtext of what Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati and Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi said after Rendell’s last budget speech was written all over their faces: Nice work, Ed. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Rendell fatigue was apparent among legislators who seem tired of a larger-than-life governor who is openly hostile to them.

Maybe that accounted for the slumping in chairs, e-mail reading and laptop surfing by so many lawmakers during Rendell’s last budget speech.

The political climate has already changed, and Republicans seem poised to take whatever victory they achieved in last year’s budget standoff and make their case earlier and stronger this budget season.

On Tuesday, Pileggi suggested that the new Pennsylvania governor should get a crack at setting the fiscal agenda in 2011 without having his hands tied by a “radical restructuring of the tax system when the governor is going out the door.”

Ed Rendell: Radical Democrat! Now there’s a theme Republicans can hammer home in the age of the “tea party” tax revolt. This dovetails nicely into a campaign season in which Attorney General Tom Corbett, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, is seen as an early frontrunner to take the state’s top job later this year.

“The truth wasn’t told in this budget,” Rohrer said. “The truth is that the state is insolvent. We don’t have the money to pay the bills. We’ve gone from a $20 billion budget to a $29 billion budget in eight years. That’s not doable. That’s not sustainable. That’s irresponsible,” Rohrer said.

Rohrer’s colleague and House Minority Leader Sam Smith took that a step further, finding inspiration from the day’s weather report. “This [budget] is a snow job,” said Smith, the Republican from Punxsutawney.

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